Or as a separate venture to capture and broadcast "in-car pr0n" - they don't have to be pictures - HD space is cheap... I wonder if that's covered in the rental agreement fine-print.

Listen, is it normal to expect all our encounters to have "party oversight"? For now, I'll assume that Hertz vehicles are "police state-ready" while others are still "in development".

Makes my choices easier for now.

Again, I fail to see the problem :)

(Bimmer owners think they also own the road)

Sounds like a strawman to me. No one (except perhaps the anti-NN folks, like yourself) has proposed that throttling excessive usage goes against the tenets of NN. What NN does argue, however, is that throttling *based on endpoint* is not kosher - mainly because it provides a strong negative incentive to customer quality.

From the FCC Commission Document ( http://www.fcc.gov/document/fc... ):

Don't confuse last-mile congestion issues (that you raise, and are legitimate) with throttling the interconnects. In your example, the BT excessive user should expect to hit monthly caps (which are not covered by NN) or overall throughput caps, especially during peak times. That's all (again referring to Commission Document) considered:

s/what you don't have to/at all/

Republicans know that if government doesn't do regulation, the monopoly or cartel that owns the market sure will (and such regulation is optimized to maximize profits, not the health of the market, much less *customer* health).

And thats where the congresscritters get their campaign funding. Sounds pretty clear to me what their goal is - just like their funders, it's to line their pockets.

Some (ie, those part of the security industrial complex) do not want this discussion because they fear a curtailment of police powers. Others do not want it because they don't trust our current government to not bend this discussion into the interests of the wealthy.

Luckily the supreme court is a bastion of ethical behavior and impartiality [1]. I trust this outcome is based on a rational forward-thinking, wise consideration.

[1 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

Flashblock does to HTML5 and Silverlight what it does to Flash. It blocks it.

The only difference between today and 2 years ago is that nowadays some browsers (Firefox, Safari for sure) block Flash by default (assuming you're not on the latest version plugin - which resembles 90% of people I know). This must be impacting the bottom line of online advertisers.

We're back to not relying on the browser to auto block ads and to use plugins like block and Flashblock (I go one step further and use facebookblocker but that's just me) to keep ourselves from being spammed.

The only problem is that mobile users are now going to use more bandwidth and get ads in return.

[cite needed]

Disagree. Why does everyone forget the golden rule?

He who has the Gold makes the Rules.

Therefore, Bankers always win. Lawyers are hired help.

This is a result of the adversarial juror selection process where legal teams from both sides, plaintiff and defendant, try very hard to remove any liabilities from the juror pool. Knowledgeable people are liable to be on a "side" and therefore will be removed by one side or another.

That combined with the fact that, as a juror, you are not rewarded or likely to get compensation from your employer, means that people who have valuable knowledge, skills and generally good understanding of lots of stuff, try very hard to not be selected.

I'm not sure there's a better way, other than perhaps to try to increase the overall average knowledge of the entire juror pool (either by free, compulsory 2ndary education) or by restricting the juror pool to prevent the "know nothings" from deciding the law on cases that could have society wide impact (a slippery slope that I probably wouldn't recommend).

How do they do this kind of thing in Europe?

I mean, with the plethora of set-top boxes like AppleTV, Roku, FireTV, ChromeCast, why would anyone in their right mind buy an all-in-one, especially from a known UI offender like Samsung (TouchWiz?).

Samsung should focus on making a TV with sound that doesn't suck (i.e., integrated wireless speakers that auto-calibrate) or maybe focus on style and setup for differentiation.

Whatever... they are a low-price disruptor and they essentially kicked Panasonic and Pioneer out of the market so they could foist this "app crap" on us. Whoever buys a Samsung "smart" TV deserves one I guess.

The only difference is that with Apple, it is simple and it works. If you doubt that, then look at how long a lead Google had with Wallet and how as soon as Apple Pay appeared, it's dominated the usage of contactless terminals.

Sure, Apple pushed it - but if it was a total pain, people wouldn't do it. There's always the fallback of actually using your card.

You don't think the same issues happen with cards vs. cash? Yeah, I go through stores already today just putting stuff in the cart, swiping at the checkout, collecting the receipt and never even looking at the bill until well after the fact (and sometimes never even then).

I manage my budget after the fact - hey that spongecake we bought was completely uneaten - never buy again. That TJs cold-brewed coffee habit is expensive but more cost-effective than buying beans and cleaning out the coffee machine... etc, etc.

Fact is, cards have already altered our spending habits and contactless does very little to modify that - it's just a nice shinier petina over the same rubric.

Amusingly the original Samsung Galaxy 7 released in 2011 (?) did require a phone subscription for their european offering. I kept thinking to myself, now that's a big phone!

Though manufacturers figured out the above - tablets will consistently be data-only devices, so they can sell you another unit just for voice.

Huh - 2 years of profit loss eh?
http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/2...

I'm no friend of MS, but you really need to work on your facts. The rest of your comment I can agree with.